Friday, May 20, 2011

Sun in Darwin, sun in the van and 23 creeks crossings.

After dropping our campervan at the office, just out of town, we shared a taxi back to the hostel with a nice couple from Germany and then made our way down to Mindil Beach, where on a sunday night there is a large cosmopolitan market, with loads of food stall, music playing and a sunset over the ocean, where everyone veg's out on the neach with a drink and just watche as the sky turns red. It was pretty good as sunsets go and a good night on the first day in Darwin.

After a good nights sleep I had a run in the morning and then after a bit of a walk around town, to check out the shops, we spent he afternoon at the lagoon, as planned, reading a book and swimming in the warm water, whilst enjoying the 30 odd degrees of sunshine. The evening was dinner followed by a movie and another good sleep. Its great to have aircon and a fridge in the room and actually reminds me of being in afghanistan!!!

This morning I had a really good lie in till way after 11am and then another afternoon down by the lagoon. Its really nice to have a few days doing nothing every now and then!

In the evening we went to the cinema – Not just an ordinary cinema though -Its the Deckchair Cinema. Basically, down by a nice bay, just out of town, there is a large garden sized outdoor cinema, with deckchairs to sit in and a little cafe doing hot food and beers. We saw an australian film called 'Tomorrow, when the war comes', which was ok, but the best bit was sitting outside on a warm evening, with possums running around under the deats trying to eat the food dropped by the cinema goers. You dont get that in a normal cinema.

This morning, it was bright and sunny again, so I had another run around the esplanade and then grabbed a bit of lunch before heading back down to the lagoon for another lazy afternoon.

In the afternoon we ran into Adam, back at the hostel. Adam is one of the guys from the groovy grape toure we took up to Alice Springs. We arranged to meet up with him later in the evening, when we had a few beers and shared dinner with him by the pool. It was nice to catch up and he invited me to visit him in New York if I am ever there!!

Early next morningt we set off again in our 3rd relocation campervan. This van is a 4wd adventure camper – which we are driving 4000km to Perth over the next 9 days. It is costing us $1 a day as we are doing the compant a favour. The only downsides being that we arent supposed to drive at night or offroad.

The 1st day was spent driving as far as we could and we had a nice day listening to comedy and music on the mp3 whille we drove just over 1000km -a quarter of the total journey to Perth. On the way we saw more bush fires than we had before, passing at least a dozen small ones and one large one just a few km's in the bush away from the main road. The smoke from it billowed high into the sky.We did cheat though by driving into the night (till 6pm, but as the time has changed by 1.5 hours it now gets dark at 5pm!!) We spent the night in a free campsite with no facilities except a drop toilet -we didnt even have any beers!

Checking out the depth of the river crossing

Digby the duck, helping out!

Hmm, that needs fixing!!

A good night at the deckchair cinema in Darwin

The lagoon - 3 afternoons spent vegging here!!

Dunno!!!

It was a good nights sleep though and we were up early to drive into The Bungles Bungles – a national park, that you have to drive offroad for 53km to reach. (therefore completely going against our rental agreement!!) The offorading was great – through 23 different river crossings and creeks until we rounded a corner and seeing 4 or 5 different proper off road 4wd vehicles stuck in about 3-4 feet of mud. They were being dragged out, by a grumpy woman who told us to turn back. So unfortunately we never made it to The Bungle Bungles proper, but had a great time driving towards it down the dirt tracks. We decided to head as far along as we could today and drove through the day towards the city of Broome, where we intended to stay the night. We finally arrived just after 5.30pm and after shopping for beer, food, beer, a broom to clean the mud from the camper and some more beer, we stayed the night in a local camper park, run by a very jolly local fat man, who we liked immediately and who told us the directions in the guise of an auctioneer selling us the way! Dinner was good and beer was good, then we relaxed after two long days and planned a lie in for tomorrow.